reproach borrow science as manufactures from our ancestors; and it is as rational to live in caves till our own hands have erected a palace, as to reject all knowledge of architecture which our understandings will not supply. To the strongest and quickest mind it is far easier to learn than to invent. The principles of arithmetic and geometry may be comprehended by a close attention in a few days; yet who can flatter himself that the study of a long life would have enabled him to discover them, when he sees them yet unknown to so many nations, whom he cannot suppose less liberally endowed with natural reason than the Grecians or Egyptians. evidence, facilitated by clearer method, or eluci dated by brighter illustrations. Fame cannot spread wide or endure long that is not rooted in nature, and manured by art. That which hopes to resist the blast of malignity, and stand firm against the attacks of time, must contain in itself some original principle of growth. The reputation which arises from the detail of transposition of borrowed sentiments may spread for a while like ivy on the rind of antiquity, but will be torn away by accident or contempt, and suffered to rot unheeded on the ground. TUESDAY, SEPT. 10, 1751. Steriles transmisimus annos -Our barren years are past; STAT ELPHINSTON Every science was thus far advanced towards perfection, by the emulous diligence of contemporary students, and the gradual discoveries of No. 155.] one age improving on another. Sometimes unexpected flashes of instruction were struck by the fortuitous collision of happy incidents, or an involuntary concurrence of ideas, in which the philosopher to whom they happened had no other merit than that of knowing their value, and transmitting, unclouded, to posterity, that light which had been kindled by causes out of his No weakness of the human mind has more frepower. The happiness of these casual illumina-quently incurred animadversion, than the neglitions no man can promise to himself, because no gence with which men overlook their own faults, endearments can procure them: and, therefore, however flagrant, and the easiness with which whatever be our abilities or application, we must they pardon them, however frequently repeated. submit to learn from others what perhaps would have lain hid for ever from human penetration, had not some remote inquiry brought it to view; as treasures are thrown up by the ploughman and the digger in the rude exercise of their common occupations. The man whose genius qualifies him for great undertakings, must at least be content to learn from books the present state of human knowledge; that he may not ascribe to himself the invention of arts generally known; weary his attention with experiments of which the event has been long registered; and waste, in attempts which have already succeeded or miscarried, that time which might have been spent with usefulness and honour upon new undertakings. It seems generally believed, that, as the eye cannot see itself, the mind has no faculties by which it can contemplate its own state, and that therefore we have not means of becoming acquainted with our real characters; an opinion which, like innumerable other postulates, an inquirer finds himself inclined to admit upon very little evidence, because it affords a ready solution of many difficulties. It will explain why the greatest abilities frequently fail to promote the happiness of those who possess them; why those who can distinguish with the utmost nicety the boundaries of vice and virtue, suffer them to be confounded in their own conduct; why the active and vigilant resign their affairs implicitly to the management of others; and why the cautious and fearful make hourly ap proaches towards ruin, without one sigh of soli But, though the study of books is necessary, it is not sufficient to constitute literary eminence. He that wishes to be counted among the bene-citude or struggle for escape. factors of posterity, must add by his own toil to When a position teems thus with commodious the acquisitions of his ancestors, and secure his consequences, who can without regret confess it memory from neglect by some valuable im- to be false? Yet it is certain that declaimers provement. This can only be effected by looking have indulged a disposition to describe the out upon the wastes of the intellectual world, and dominion of the passions as extended beyond extending the power of learning over regions yet the limits that nature assigned. Self-love is undisciplined and barbarous or by surveying often rather arrogant than blind: it does not more exactly our ancient dominions, and driving hide our faults from ourselves, but persuades us ignorance from the fortresses and retreats where that they escape the notice of others, and disshe sculks undetected and undisturbed. Every poses us to resent censures lest we should conscience has its difficulties, which yet call for so-fess them to be just. We are secretly conscious lution before we attempt new systems of knowledge; as every country has its forests and marshes, which it would be wise to cultivate and drain, before distant colonies are projected as a necessary discharge of the exuberance of the inhabitants. No man ever yet became great by imitation. Whoever hopes for the veneration of mankind must have invention in the design or the execution; either the effect must itself be new, or the means by which it is produced. Either truths hitherto unknown must be discovered, or those which are already known enforced by stronger of defects and vices which we hope to conceal from the public eye, and please ourselves with innumerable impostures, by which, in reality, nobody is deceived. In proof of the dimness of our internal sight, or the general inability of man to determine rightly concerning his own character, it is common to urge the success of the most absurd and incredible flattery, and the resentment always raised by advice, however soft, benevolent, and reasonable. But flattery, if its operation be nearly examined, will be found to owe its acceptance, not to our ignorance but knowledge of our failures, and to delight us rather as it consoles our wants than displays our possessions. He that shall solicit the favour of his patron by praising him for qualities which he can find in himself, will be defeated by the more daring panegyrist who enriches him with adscititious excellence. Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present. The acknowledgment of those virtues on which conscience congratulates us, is a tribute that we can at any time exact with confidence; but the celebration of those which we only feign, or desire without any vigorous endeavours to attain them, is received as a confession of sovereignty over regions never conquered, as a favourable decision of disputable claims, and is more welcome as it is more gratuitous. Advice is offensive, not because it lays us open to unexpected regret, or convicts us of any fault which has escaped our notice, but because it shows us that we are known to others as well as to ourselves; and the officious monitor is persecuted with hatred, not because his accusation is false, but because he assumes that superiority which we are not willing to grant him, and has dared to detect what we desired to conceal. For this reason advice is commonly ineffectual. If those who follow the call of their desires, without inquiry whither they are going, had deviated ignorantly from the paths of wisdom, and were rushing upon dangers unforeseen, they would readily listen to information that recalls them from their errors, and catch the first aların by which destruction or infamy is denounced. Few that wander in the wrong way mistake it for the right; they only find it more smooth and flowery, and indulge their own choice rather than approve it: therefore few are persuaded to quit it by admonition or reproof, since it impresses no new conviction, nor confers any powers of action or resistance. He that 18 gravely informed how soon profusion will annihilate his fortune, hears with little advantage what he knew before, and catches at the next occasion of expense, because advice has no force to suppress his vanity. He that is told how certainly intemperance will hurry him to the grave, runs with his usual speed to a new course of luxury, because his reason is not invigorated, nor his appetite weakened. The mischief of flattery is, not that it persuades any man that he is what he is not, but that it suppresses the influence of honest ambition, by raising an opinion that honour may be gained without the toil of merit; and the benefit of advice arises commonly, not from any new light imparted to the mind, but from the discovery which it affords of the public suffrages. He that could withstand conscience is frighted at infamy, and shame prevails when reason was defeated. As we all know our own faults, and know them commonly with many aggravations which human perspicacity cannot discover, there is, perhaps, no man, however hardened by impudence or dissipated by ievity, sheltered by hypocrisy or blasted by disgrace, who does not intend some time to review his conduct, and to regulate the remainder of his life by the laws of virtue. New temptations indeed attack him, new invitations are offered by pleasure and interest, and the hour of reformation is always delayed; every delay gives vice another opportunity of fortifying itself by habit; and the change of manners, though sincerely intended and rationally planned, is referred to the time when some craving passion shall be fully gratified, or some powerful al lurement cease its importunity. Thus procrastination is accumulated on pro crastination, and one impediment succeeds ano ther, till age shatters our resolution, or death intercepts the project of amendment. Such is often the end of salutary purposes, after they have long delighted the imagination, and appeas ed that disquiet which every mind feels from known misconduct, when the attention is not di. verted by business or by pleasure. Nothing surely can be more unworthy of a reasonable nature, than to continue in a state so opposite to real happiness, as that all the peace of solitude, and felicity of meditation, must arise from resolutions of forsaking it. Yet the world will often afford examples of men, who pass months and years in a continual war with their own convictions, and are daily dragged by habit, or betrayed by passion, into practices which they closed and opened their eyes with purposes to avoid; purposes which though settled on conviction, the first impulse of momentary desire totally overthrows. The influence of custom is indeed such, that to conquer it will require the utmost efforts of for titude and virtue; nor can I think any men more worthy of veneration and renown than those who have burst the shackles of habitual vice. This victory, however, has different degrees of glory as of difficulty; it is more heroic as the objects of guilty gratification are more familiar, and the recurrence of solicitation more frequent. He that, from experience of the folly of ambition, resigns his offices, may set himself free at once from temptation to squander his life in courts, because he cannot regain his former station. He who is enslaved by an amorous passion, may quit his tyrant in disgust, and absence will, without the help of reason, overcome by degrees the desire of returning. But those appetites to which every place affords their proper object, and which require no preparatory measures or gradual advances, are more tenaciously adhesive; the wish is so near the enjoyment, that compliance often precedes consideration; and, before the powers of reason can be summoned, the time for employ. ing them is past. Indolence is, therefore, one of the vices from which those whom it once infects are seldom reformed. Every other species of luxury operates upon some appetite that is quickly satiated, and requires some concurrence of art or accident which every place will not supply; but the desire of ease acts equally at all hours, and the longer it is indulged is the more increased. Tʊ do nothing is in every man's power; we can never want an opportunity of omitting duties. The lapse to indolence is soft and imperceptible, because it is only a mere cessation of activity; but the return to diligence is difficult, because it implies a change from rest to motion, from privation to reality. Facilis descensus Averni: VIRG herself; and, like the ancient Scythians, by extending her conquests over distant regions, she has left her throne vacant to her slaves. Among the laws of which the desire of extending authority, or ardour of promoting knowledge, has prompted the prescription, all which writers have received, had not the same original right to our regard. Some are to be considered as fundamental and indispensable, others only as useful and convenient; some as dictated by reason and necessity, others as enacted by despotic antiquity; some as invincibly supported by their conformity to the order of nature and operations of the intellect; others as formed by accident, or instituted by example, and therefore always liable to dispute and alteration. Of this vice, as of all others, every man who indulges it is conscious: we all know our own state, if we could be induced to consider it; and it might perhaps be useful to the conquest of all these ensnarers of the mind, if, at certain stated days, life was reviewed. Many things necessary are omitted, because we vainly imagine that they may be always performed; and what cannot be done without pain will for ever be delayed, if the time of doing it be left unsettled. No corruption is great but by long negligence, which can scarcely prevail in a mind regularly and frequentHe that That many rules have been advanced without ly awakened by periodical remorse. thus breaks his life into parts, will find in himself consulting nature or reason, we cannot but susa desire to distinguish every stage of his exist-pect, when we find it peremptorily decreed by the ence by some improvement, and delight himself with the approach of the day of recollection, as of the time which is to begin a new series of virtue and felicity. ancient masters, that only three speaking personages should appear at once upon the stage; a law which, as the variety and intricacy of modern plays has made it impossible to be observed, we now violate without scruple, and, as experience proves, without inconvenience. The original of this precept was merely accidental. Tragedy was a monody, or solitary song in honour of Bacchus, improved afterwards into a dialogue by the addition of another speaker: but the ancients remembering that the tragedy was at first pronounced only by one, durst not for some time venture beyond two;.at last, when custom and impunity had made them daring, they extended their liberty to the admission of three, but restrained themselves by a critical edict from further exorbitance. EVERY government, say the politicians, is perpetually degenerating towards corruption, from which it must be rescued at certain periods by the resuscitation of its first principles, and the reestablishment of its original constitution. Every animal body, according to the methodic physi By what accident the number of acts was li cians, is, by the predominance of some exuberant mited to five, I know not that any author has in quality, continually declining towards disease and formed us; but certainly it is not determined by death, which must be obviated by a seasonable any necessity arising either from the nature of reduction of the peccant humour to the just equi-action or propriety of exhibition. An act is only poise which health requires. In the same manner the studies of mankind, all at least which, not being subject to rigorous demonstration, admit the influence of fancy and caprice, are perpetually tending to error and confusion. Of the great principles of truth which the first speculatists discovered, the simplicity is embarrassed by ambitious additions, or the evidence obscured by inaccurate argumentation; and as they descend from one succession of writers to another, like light transmitted from room to room, they lose their strength and splendour, and fade at last in total evanescence. the representation of such a part of the business of the play as proceeds in an unbroken tenor, or without any intermediate pause. Nothing is more evident than that of every real, and by conse quence of every dramatic action, the intervals may be more or fewer than five; and indeed the rule is upon the English stage every day broken in effect, without any other mischief than that which arises from an absurd endeavour to observe it in appearance. Whenever the scene is shifted the act ceases, since some time is necessarily suppos ed to elapse while the personages of the drama change their place. With no greater right to our obedience have the critics confined the dramatic action to a cer tain number of hours. Probability requires that the time of action should approach somewhat nearly to that of exhibition, and those plays will always be thought most happily conducted which crowd the greatest variety into the least space. But since it will frequently happen that some delusion must be admitted, I know not where the limits of imagination can be fixed. It is rarely observed that minds, not prepossessed by me The systems of learning therefore must be sometimes reviewed, complications analysed into principles, and knowledge disentangled from opinion. It is not always possible, without a close inspection, to separate the genuine shoots of consequential reasoning, which grow out of some radical postulate, from the branches which art has engrafted on it. The accidental prescriptions of authority, when time has procured them veneration, are often confounded with the laws of nature, and those rules are supposed coeval with reason, of which the first rise cannot be dis-chanical criticism, feel any offence from the extencovered. Criticism has sometimes permitted fancy to dictate the laws by which fancy ought to be restrained, and fallacy to perplex the principles by which fallacy is to be detected; her superintendence of others has betrayed her to negligence of sion of the intervals between the acts; nor can I conceive it absurd or impossible, that he who can multiply three hours into twelve or twenty-four, might image with equal ease a greater number. I know not whether he that professes to regard no other laws than those of nature, will not be Οἱ αἰδὼς Γίγνεται ἡ ἄνδρας μέγα σινεται ἠδ ̓ ὀνίνησι. SIR, TO THE RAMBLER. ELPHINSTON inclined to receive tragi-comedy to his protec-| No. 157.] TUESDAY, Sept. 17, 1751. tion, whom, however generally condemned, her own laurels have hitherto shaded from the fulminations of criticism. For what is there in the mingled drama which impartial reason can condemn? The connexion of important with trivial incidents, since it is not only common but perpetual in the world, may surely be allowed upon the stage, which pretends only to be the mirror of life. The impropriety of suppressing passions THOUGH one of your correspondents has prebefore we have raised them to the intended agi-sumed to mention with some contempt that pretation, and of diverting the expection from an sence of attention, and easiness of address, which event which we keep suspended only to raise it, the polite have long agreed to celebrate and esmay be speciously urged. But will not expe- teem, yet I cannot be persuaded to think them rience show this objection to be rather subtile unworthy of regard or cultivation; but am in than just? Is it not certain that the tragic and clined to believe that, as we seldom value rightly comic affections have been moved alternately what we have never known the misery of wantwith equal force; and that no plays have oftener ing, his judgment has been vitiated by his happifilled the eye with tears, and the breast withness; and that a natural exuberance of assurance palpitation, than those which are variegated with has hindered him from discovering its excellence interludes of mirth? and use. I do not however think it safe to judge of works This felicity, whether bestowed by constituof genius merely by the event. The resistless tion, or obtained by early habitudes, I can vicissitudes of the heart, this alternate preva- scarcely contemplate without envy. I was bred lence of merriment and solemnity, may some- under a man of learning in the country, who intimes be more properly ascribed to the vigour of culcated nothing but the dignity of knowledge, the writer than the justness of the design: and, and the happiness of virtue. By frequency of instead of vindicating tragi-comedy by the suc- admonition, and confidence of assertion, he precess of Shakspeare, we ought, perhaps, to pay vailed upon me to believe, that the splendour of new honours to that transcendent and unbound- literature would always attract reverence, if not ed genius that could preside over the passions in darkened by corruption. I therefore pursued sport; who, to actuate the affections, needed not my studies with incessant industry, and avoided the slow gradation of common means, but could every thing which I had been taught to consider fill the heart with instantaneous jollity to sorrow, either as vicious or tending to vice, because I and vary our disposition as he changed his scenes. regarded guilt and reproach as inseparably Perhaps the effects even of Shakspeare's poet-united, and thought a tainted reputation the ry might have been yet greater had he not coun- greatest calamity. teracted himself; and we might have been more interested in the distresses of his heroes, had we not been so frequently diverted by the jokes of his buffoons. of learning, but was observed to seize commonly on those who either neglected the sciences or could not attain them; and I was therefore confirmed in the doctrines of my old master, and thought nothing worthy of my care but the means of gaining or imparting knowledge. At the university, I found no reason for changing my opinion: for though many among my fellow-students took the opportunity of a more remiss discipline to gratify their passions; There are other rules more fixed and obliga- yet virtue preserved her natural superiority, and tory. It is necessary that of every play the chief those who ventured to neglect were not suffered action should be single; for, since a play repre- to insult her. The ambition of petty accom sents some transaction through its regular ma-plishments found its way into the receptacles turation to its final event, two actions equally important must evidently constitute two plays. As the design of tragedy is to instruct by moving the passions, it must always have a hero, a personage, apparently and incontestably superior to the rest, upon whom the attention may be fixed, and the anxiety suspended. For though, of two persons opposing each other with equal abilities and equal virtue, the auditor will inevitably, in time, choose his favourite; yet, as that choice must be without any cogency of conviction, the hopes or fears which it raises will be faint and languid. Of two heroes acting in confederacy against a common enemy, the virtues or dangers will give little emotion, because each claims our concern with the same right, and the heart lies at rest between equal motives. This purity of manners, and intenseness of application, soon extended my renown, and I was applauded, by those whose opinion I then thought unlikely to deceive me, as a young man that gave uncommon hopes of future eminence. My performances in time reached my native province, and my relations congratulated them selves upon the new honours that were added to their family. I returned home covered with academical laurels, and fraught with criticism and philosophy. It ought to be the first endeavour of a writer to The wit and the scholar excited curiosity, and distinguish nature from custom; or that which my acquaintance was solicited by innumerable is established because it is right, from that which invitations. To please will always be the wish is right only because it is established; that he of benevolence, to be admired must be the conmay neither violate essential principles by a de- stant aim of ambition; and I therefore consisire of novelty, nor debar himself from the attain-dered myself as about to receive the reward of ment of beauties within his view, by a needless my honest labours, and to find the efficacy of fear of breaking rules which no literary dictator learning and of virtue. had authority to enact. The third day after my arrival I dined at the house of a gentleman who had summoned a mul sidered whatever the poets have sung in the praise, and, after having borrowed and invented, chosen and rejected, a thousand sentiments, which, if I had uttered them, would not have been understood, I was awakened from my dream of learned gallantry by the servant who distributed the tea. titude of his friends to the annual celebration of | his wedding-day. I set forward with great exuitation, and thought myself happy that I had an opportunity of displaying my knowledge to so numerous an assembly. I felt no sense of my own insufficiency, till, going up stairs to the dining-room, I heard the mingled roar of obstreperous merriment. I was, however, disgusted There are not many situations more incesrather than terrified, and went forward without santly uneasy than that in which the man is dejection. The whole company rose at my en-placed who is watching an opportunity to speak, trance; but when I saw so many eyes fixed at once upon me, I was blasted with a sudden imbecility, I was quelled by some nameless power which I found impossible to be resisted. My sight was dazzled, my cheeks glowed, my perceptions were confounded; I was harassed by the multitude of eager salutations, and returned the common civilities with hesitation and impropriety; the sense of my own blunders increased my confusion, and before the exchange of ceremonies allowed me to sit down, I was ready to sink under the impression of surprise; my voice grew weak, and my knees trembled. The assembly then resumed their places, and I sat with my eyes fixed upon the ground. To the questions of curiosity, or the appeals of complaisance, I could seldom answer but with negative monosyllables, or professions of ignorance; for the subjects on which they conversed were such as are seldom discussed in books, and were therefore out of my range of knowledge. At length an old clergyman, who rightly conjectured the reason of my conciseness, relieved me by some questions about the present state of natural knowledge, and engaged me, by an appearance of doubt and opposition, in the explication and defence of the Newtonian philosophy. without courage to take it when it is offered, and who, though he resolves to give a specimen of his abilities, always finds some reason or other for delaying it to the next minute. I was ashamed of silence, yet could find nothing to say of elegance or importance equal to my wishes. The ladies, afraid of my learning, thought themselves not qualified to propose any subject of prattle to a man so famous for dispute, and there was nothing on either side but impatience and vexation. In this conflict of shame, as I was re-assem bling my scattered sentiments, and, resolving to force my imagination to some sprightly sally, had just found a very happy compliment, by too much attention to my own meditations, I suf fered the saucer to drop from my hand. The cup was broken, the lap-dog was scalded, a brocaded petticoat was stained, and the whole assembly was thrown into disorder. I now considered all hopes of reputation as at an end, and while they were consoling and assisting one another, stole away in silence. The misadventures of this unhappy day are not yet at an end; I am afraid of meeting the meanest of them that triumphed over me in this state of stupidity and contempt, and feel the The consciousness of my own abilities roused same terrors encroaching upon my heart at the me from depression, and long familiarity with sight of those who have once impressed them. my subject enabled me to discourse with ease Shame, above any other passion, propagates itand volubility; but, however I might please myself. Before those who have seen me confused, self, I found very little added by my demonstrations to the satisfaction of the company; and my antagonist, who knew the laws of conversation too well to detain their attention long upon an unpleasing topic, after he had commended my acuteness and comprehension, dismissed the controversy, and resigned me to my former insignificance and perplexity. After dinner I received from the ladies, who had heard that I was a wit, an invitation to the tea-table. I congratulated myself upon an opportunity to escape from the company, whose gayety began to be tumultuous, and among whom several hints had been dropped of the uselessness of universities, the folly of booklearning, and the awkwardness of scholars. To the ladies, therefore, I flew, as to a refuge from clamour, insult and rusticity; but found my heart sink as I approached their apartment, and was again disconcerted by the ceremonies of entrance, and confounded by the necessity of encountering so many eyes at once. When I sat down I considered that something pretty was always said to ladies, and resolved to recover my credit by some elegant observation or graceful compliment. I applied myself to the recollection of all that I had read or heard in praise of beauty, and endeavoured to accommodate some classical compliment to the present occasion. I sunk into profound meditation, revolved the characters of the heroines of old, con I never appear without new confusion; and the remembrance of the weakness which I formerly discovered, hinders me from acting or speaking with my natural force. But is this misery, Mr. Rambler, never to cease? Have I spent my life in study only to become the sport of the ignorant, and debarred myself from all the common enjoyments of youth to collect ideas which must sleep in silence, and form opinions which I must not divulge? Inform me, dear Sir, by what means I may rescue my faculties from these shackles of cowardice, how I may rise to a level with my fellow-beings, recall myself from this languor of involuntary subjection to the free exertion of my intellects, and add to the power of reasoning the liberty of speech. I am, Sir, &c |